THIS EVENING!!! RTÉ television documentaries: ‘The Last Priests in Ireland’ (features the ACP’s Roy Donovan) and ‘The Last Nuns in Ireland’
‘The Last Priests in Ireland’ and ‘The Last Nuns in Ireland’
Episode one, Monday 15th Jan 9.35pm and Episode two, Tuesday 16th Jan 10.15pm
The statistics are stark. The average age of priests in Ireland is now over 70 – for nuns, it’s over 80 – and the supply of vocations to religious life has slowed to a trickle. In a pair of authored films, actor and comedian, Ardal O’Hanlon, and writer and broadcaster, Dearbhail McDonald, explore the role of Catholic clergy and religious sisters in Irish life and ask, What if these are the last priests and nuns in Ireland?
Ireland has had a dwindling number of Catholic clergy since the 1960s, but, over the last thirty years, a litany of scandals has given rise to public disillusionment and frequent negative media coverage of the ones who remain. In a country where, in living memory, clergy and religious sisters ran, not only parishes, but schools, hospitals, housing and social services, and where practically every family would once proudly boast of having a priest or a nun, religious vocations have now all but dried-up. The average age of Catholic priests in Ireland is now over 70 – for nuns, it’s over 80 – with many working way beyond normal retirement age, because there are insufficient numbers coming through to replace them. If those trends continue, then, without urgent remedy, both professions appear to be in terminal decline.
That is the context and spur for these two authored documentaries, in which Ardal O’Hanlon and Dearbhail McDonald – both educated by priests and nuns – examine how Catholic clergy influenced every aspect of society in Ireland and the diaspora, while considering what we could be losing, if religious vocations continue to decline. Neither an elegy nor an assault, the series is a compelling, thought-provoking and often deeply moving exploration of the unique role played by priests and nuns in Irish life.
EPISODE 1
THE LAST PRIESTS IN IRELAND
SYNOPSIS
Actor and comedian Ardal O’Hanlon examines the role of the clergy in Irish life to see how they might have shaped our lives for better or for worse.
Actor and comedian Ardal O’Hanlon examines the role of Catholic priests in Irish life, from earliest times to the present day, to see how they shaped Irish lives for better or for worse. Thirty years of secularisation and scandals, combined with increasingly negative media coverage and public disillusionment, have contributed to a drastic decline in religious vocations. Now, as an increasingly elderly population of priests and nuns retires or dies, there are not nearly enough new vocations to replace them. The future looks stark for the traditional, highly clerical model of Irish Catholicism.
But does that matter? Ardal O’Hanlon, who was raised in a typically devout Catholic family and educated by priests, asks what we would be losing, if the present generation of Irish priests really were the last. Who, if anyone, would perform their function in Irish society – their moral influence, their social contribution, their role in so many people’s rituals of “hatching, matching and dispatching”? Or could we do without them?
Neither an elegy nor an assault, the documentary is an engaging, thought-provoking and compelling look at the unique role and contribution of Catholic priests in Irish life.
EPISODE 2
THE LAST NUNS IN IRELAND
SYNOPSIS
Broadcaster Dearbhail McDonald examines the role of nuns in Ireland to see how they have shaped Irish lives, including her own, for better or for worse. If these really are “The Last Nuns in Ireland”, will we miss them?
The statistics are stark. The average age of nuns in Ireland is now over 80 – and the supply of vocations to religious life has slowed to a trickle. Convent-educated journalist and broadcaster Dearbhail McDonald, examines the role of female religious sisters in Ireland, from earliest times to the present day, to see how they have shaped Irish lives – for better or for worse. Thirty years of secularisation and scandals, combined with public disillusionment and negative media coverage, have contributed to a drastic decline in religious vocations.
This is the context and spur for the film, authored by Dearbhail, who cut her teeth as a young journalist reporting on the clerical and institutional abuse scandals. In a society where “the nuns” once ran practically every element of our education, healthcare and social services, she asks herself if she is ready to look at their contribution in the round?
Dearbhail starts her journey in her home town of Newry where she spent 14 years at two local schools run by the Order of St Clare. Today her primary school is a shell of its former self awaiting demolition and redevelopment for housing – just one of many such convent schools around Ireland which are awaiting a similar fate. As she makes her way around the country meeting a combination of religious and academics, she gains a deeper insight into the circumstances in which nuns and sisters came to be so firmly embedded in the lives of towns and villages – in Ireland as well as abroad. However, nuns were also linked to the Church related scandals which emerged in the 1990s and 2000s and this is the legacy which Dearbhail struggles with. Speaking on camera for the first time, several sisters tell their side of those controversies – their shock and dismay at learning about these scandals, the challenges to their own faith and how they have had to deal with negative perceptions of their legacy to Irish society. Some sisters feel that religious life is at an end whilst others are convinced there will always be a place for nuns in Irish society.
For Dearbhail, this process makes her examine her own preconceptions of religious life and wonder how we can navigate current and future flashpoints involving the State and the Catholic Church in Ireland.
“I have spent a significant part of my own vocation as a journalist criticising ‘the nuns’ and the Catholic Church’s once powerful hold over Irish society”, said McDonald.
“But this is a way of life that could be gone in 10 or 15 years’ time. This journey forced me to revise many of my own prejudices about women in religious life. We cannot avoid our shared history, but we do need to find ways to navigate the complicated relationships between Church and State in the future. Exploring the lives of ‘the nuns’ has helped me reflect on the need for those important conversations.”
Neither an elegy nor an assault, the documentary is a candid, compelling, thought-provoking and, at times, deeply moving examination of the role of Catholic religious sisters in Irish life.
The Last Nuns in Ireland is a Scratch Films production for RTÉ made with the support from the Sound & Vision Fund of Coimisiún na Meán.
Episode one, The Last Priests in Ireland airs Mon Jan 15th at 9.35pm and episode two The Last Nuns In Ireland airs Tues Jan 16th at 10.15pm.
It is easy to distrust the outsider’s view of religious life since it is what it is, a way of life, which the outsider however well intentioned can only assess from the outside. All left brained assessments of religious life will demonstrate enormous certitude based on details drawn as honestly as possible from the external worlds of various ministries and badly attempted ‘good works’.
No one will remember that we were once ordinary young girls growing up in Ireland who simply chose another way of life. We were idealistic and probably naive but we gave our young lives cheerfully, energetically, and single-mindedly to God and others, doing our best to mature as women, as educators, through the struggles and transitions of midlife and the wisdom and vulnerabilities of later life. Religious life, no better or no worse than other ways of life offers possibilities for growth and the possibility of making a difference in society.
There is no perfect way to live one’s life. Like the good athlete we try to leave everything on the field of play and there may be no one to come after us to remember. We have no progeny, that’s what we singed up for. The harvest is invisible, it belongs in another currency.
In light of the recent developments coming out to night concerning the bishops conference in Africa on Fiducia Supplicans and the recent statement given by the Holy Father on the subject of surrogacy calling it ‘deplorable’, both statements must leave us tonight more hopeful that while the number coming forward to accept the gift of religious life is falling the Holy Spirit hasn’t disappeared into a cupboard but is playing their path in keeping the church alive to its mission despite a few who appear confused as to what their role as pastoral ministers is all about.
Good American bishop stresses the gospel perspective of Fiducia Supplicans: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/01/11/bonnar-fiducia-supplicans-pope-francis-joy-gospel-246824?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2928&pnespid=saB8BSEWKv4Iw6mavzu1CoKOvUqvXZVxMvSnz.cwoxBmEEeLa8QpHW5eSckVCLfCiggPPmVfXg
Massimo Faggioli talks of the institutional problems: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/francis-synodality-fiducia-supplicans-bishops-fernandez?fbclid=IwAR1SVFPwbPxDf4b427HG4i4Z5gd1xrasj0RHFUE3TqP7VCb2YVDjqDc3Mps
But he misses the human core of Francis’s intervention, who knows that time is running out to fulfil his vows to make the church a more welcoming and understanding place for lgbt folk and to get rid of the hypocrisy.
That a Pope should make an entirely personal response to the cry of the faithful, overriding the protocols of a Curia that has too often used those protocols in anti-pastoral ways, seems to me quite within the powers of the Petrine office. Francis has actually put his reputation on the line in a bold prophetic act, preferring to be remembered as having struck a blow against hypocrisy, however small, than as having basked in cheap popularity.
Thanks for the reminder and thanks for Colm’s reminder too.
The fact is we live in time where individuals think more for themselves. Plus the many scandals, abuses, hypocrisy of religion are not pushed under the carpet.
Also the unnatural demands of sexless life with no children is not exactly enticing I think the institution of religion has had its time. I for one am grateful.
After those two programs looking in depth at the decline of our church in Ireland, I am more than surprised by the paucity of comment.
Paddy@6, Sean O Conaill’s latest article on the ACI forum, “2024: Irish Catholic Vocations Office Mired in Clericalism”, is probably as comprehensive a comment on the whole ‘vocations’ schemozzle as one could wish for. It deserves an airing on this ACP site too.
Hi, Paddy, I penned a comment but did not send it: ‘Jan 18 2024 The good thing about the “last priests” programme was the human voices, all engaging and attractive. 45 years ago I exclaimed, half in jest, to a French friend who had made some remark about the clergy: “Une caste mourante et qui cherche à mourir!” — a shocking utterance then, but one that seems to have become a basic axiom of many priests now, to judge from this programme. Will some future generation pick up the broken shards and found a new Christian culture on modern premises? The crystal ball seems completely opaque. Yet religious longing has not died out, as the references to shamanistic mediation, Celtic panentheism, community, etc., indicate.
But really the programme was too bland to elicit comment, and there was nothing new in it. Was anything said about sexual abuse of minors by clergy? That might clash with the feel-good atmosphere aimed at, and would be far too difficult for the presenters to handle.
Thanks, Eddie @7. For some reason that I don’t understand myself I haven’t been logging onto the ACI site recently but now I will start doing so again.
And, thanks Joe@8. I wondered had you been able to watch the programs. Yes, it was bland but I suppose everything has already been dissected and discussed ad nauseum.
I still enjoyed watching both nights even allowing for the blandness.
I had thought about replying to Peadar following his comment about the “radical nature of celibacy” and love too on our island.
But then I decided it really isn’t my responsibility to respond to every piece of nonsense that appears on this site.
I’ve not had access to the second programme, which I hope did justice to the goodness and kindness of our religious sisters. “Ah, sure where would we be without our priests and nuns!” is a cringe-making phrase, but could well be uttered sincerely for the sisters. The story Frank O’Connor tells about how his mother was helped by the Reverend Mother and other sisters in the Good Shepherd Convent remains very vivid all these years later, and suggests that there are other similar stories that remain untold. See An Only Child, Part One, section 3: http://www.enhaut.ca/projects/foc/repo/autobiog/aoc.html https://www.irishfamilydetective.ie/post/2017/09/14/frank-oconnor-an-only-child
(Ed: This is the link to both programmes,
https://www.rte.ie/player/series/the-last-priests-and-nuns-in-ireland/10001910-00-0000?epguid=IP10001911-01-0001
scroll down for programme 2 on the nuns.)
Recently I read that astronomers have discovered 85 possible planets outside our solar system with temperatures potentially cool enough to sustain life. To find cool heads elsewhere in the universe would be a great blessing – but it will probably be light years away before we hear from them.
Dearbhail McDonald did a wonderful job, expressing better than anyone what the Irish people feel about those once omnipresent gracious women. Is there any bridge from the fervour of faith and charity in the past to something worthy of the Christian heritage in the present? The world of Trent and the Counter-Reformation has vanished and people forget the powerful grip it had on individual souls, on communities, on church and state. It was second nature for Catholics to submit unquestioningly to the awesome church that Trent created. “Clericalism” was much more than the word suggests; it was the spiritual life of the church. Can we retrieve the great sources of the past without their oppressiveness? Can we love Augustine without being tainted by his neuroses? How do we make the work of those great saints a resource rather than a millstone?
More reviews:
America Magazine:
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/01/24/priest-sister-catholic-church-vocation-crisis-ireland-247003
Catholic Herald:
https://catholicherald.co.uk/the-last-priests-and-nuns-in-ireland-a-missed-opportunity-to-move-beyond-the-same-old-tropes/
MWR Faith Alive 21 Jan 24 with Monica Morley & Fr Brendan Hoban:
https://soundcloud.com/user-211747038/faith-alive-210124-monica-morley-fr-brendan-hoban-review-of-last-priests-nuns-in-ireland?si=7fa9f986ed5c4635b76b7080d689ee53&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Dualta Roughneen’s review of the two programmes in the Catholic Herald was excellent and well worth a read.
Catholic Herald:
https://catholicherald.co.uk/the-last-priests-and-nuns-in-ireland-a-missed-opportunity-to-move-beyond-the-same-old-tropes/